Prisoner Henry CAVANAGH

Henry Cavanagh was not sent to Port Arthur, as the NLA Catalogue notes claim. His name does not appear in the House of Assembly Journals, Nominal Return of Prisoners sent to Port Arthur since its transfer to Colonial Government in 1871, tabled in Parliament on 11th June, 1873. He was discharged before that date, on the 14th June 1872 after sentencing of one month in Hobart, and arraigned in Launceston nine months later, on the 3rd September 1873. He was received at the Hobart Gaol, sentenced to 6 years, and photographed there on 17th September 1873 by T. J. Nevin.

The numbering on the verso of this carte, according to the NLA notes is “306”. This is an archivist’s number which could date from ca 1916 sourced from John Watt Beattie’s “Port Arthur Museum” located in Hobart (and not at Port Arthur), or from the 1930s when the QVMAG acquired Beattie’s Collection, or from the 1960s with the Gunson Collection acquisition by the NLA, or from the 1980s when the QVMAG copied and/or distributed more than seventy (70) of these cdvs of Tasmanian prisoners to the NLA, AOT, TMAG etc.

POLICE RECORDS

Henry Cavanagh from Victoria, 18 years old, charged at Burnie, Tasmania on 4th May 1872, with being on premises for an unlawful purpose, was discharged from the Hobart Gaol on 14 June 1872.

But a year or so later, Henry Cavanagh, aged 19 yrs, was arraigned at the Recorder’s Court Launceston on 3 September 1873 and sentenced to 6 years for stealing a posted letter and uttering. He was admitted to the Hobart Gaol (Campbell St Gaol) and photographed by T. J. Nevin on 17th September 1873.

Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923)

Professional photographer Thomas James Nevin snr (1842-1923) produced large numbers of stereographs and cartes-de-visite within his commercial practice, and prisoner identification photographs on government contract. His career spanned nearly three decades, from the early 1860s to the late 1880s. He was one of the first photographers to work with the police in Australia, along with Charles Nettleton (Victoria) and Frazer Crawford (South Australia). His Tasmanian prisoner mugshots are among the earliest to survive in public collections, viz. the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Tasmanian Heritage and Archives Office, Hobart; the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasman Peninsula; the National Library of Australia, Canberra; and the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Thomas J. Nevin's stereographs and portraits are held in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Switzerland.

John Nevin snr (1808-1887)

Soldier, journalist, teacher and poet John Nevin snr (1808-1887). in the Royal Scots 1825-1841

Disclaimer

We have not voluntarily contributed to any publication which supports the misattribution of Nevin's prisoner/convict photographs (300+ extant) to the non-photographer A.H. Boyd, nor do we condone any attempts by public institutions or private individuals to co-opt the work on these Nevin weblogs and associated sites to apply the misattribution.

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